AlterNet.org: Chris Rosehttps://www.alternet.org/authors/chris-rose
enPentagon Says Global Warming Poses an Immediate Risk to National Securityhttps://www.alternet.org/us-defense-secretary-hagel-outlines-militarys-response-climate-change-threat-multiplier
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Defense Secretary Hagel outlines military&#039;s response to climate change &#039;threat multiplier.&#039;</div></div></div><!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter[3]--> <p>While U.S. politicians continue to disagree on global warming and its potentially catastrophic consequences, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has just released a report saying climate change will have serious implications for national security.</p><p>“Rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels, and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict,” Hagel said in the introduction to the report —<a href="http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/CCARprint.pdf" target="_blank">Department of Defense: 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap</a>. </p><p>“They will likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions across the globe.”</p><p>Hagel said the U.S. military refers to climate change as a “threat multiplier” because it has the potential to exacerbate many of today’s challenges – from infectious disease to terrorism.</p><p>He also said a changing climate will have significant impacts on the military and the way it executes its missions, including supporting civil authorities and providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief in the face of more frequent and more intense natural disasters.</p><p>Coastal installations are vulnerable to rising sea levels and increased flooding, he said in the 16-page report, while droughts, wildfires, and more extreme temperatures could threaten many training activities.</p><p>“We must also work with other nations to share tools for assessing and managing climate change impacts, and help build their capacity to respond. Climate change is a global problem. Its impacts do not respect national borders. No nation can deal with it alone. We must work together, building joint capabilities to deal with these emerging threats.”</p><p>Hagel added that the potential consequences of climate change means politics or ideology must not get in the way of sound military planning.</p><p>He said the Department of Defence (DoD) is almost finished a baseline survey that assesses the vulnerability of the U.S. military’s more than 7,000 bases, installations, and other facilities.</p><p>“In places like the Hampton Roads region in Virginia, which houses the largest concentration of US military sites in the world, we see recurrent flooding today, and we are beginning work to address a projected sea-level rise of 1.5 feet over the next 20 to 50 years,” he said.</p><p>In a related <a href="http://www.defense.gov/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1893." target="_blank">speech</a> Monday to the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas in Arequipa, Peru, Hagel was quoted as saying that the loss of glaciers due to climate change will strain water supplies in several areas of the world.</p><p>“Destruction and devastation from hurricanes can sow the seeds for instability,” he said. “Droughts and crop failures can leave millions of people without any lifeline, and trigger waves of mass migration.”</p><p>He said that while those kinds of events have occurred in other regions of the world, and there are worrying signs that climate change will create serious risks to stability in the Americas.</p><p>“Two of the worst droughts in the Americas have occurred in the past 10 years … droughts that used to occur once a century. In the Caribbean, sea level rise may claim 1,200 square miles of coastal land in the next 50 years, and some islands may have to be completely evacuated. According to some estimates, rising temperatures could melt entire glaciers in the Andes, which could have cascading economic and security consequences.”</p><p>Uncertainty regarding climate change is no excuse for delaying action, an accompanying DoD news <a href="http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=123398" target="_blank">story</a> quoted Hagel as saying.</p><p>“While scientists are converging toward consensus on future climate projections, uncertainty remains. But this cannot be an excuse for delaying action,” Hagel said.</p><p>“Every day, our military deals with global uncertainty. Our planners know that, as military strategist Carl von Clausewitz wrote, ‘all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight.’ ”</p><p>According to the New York Times, the new report marks a significant shift forU.S. military strategic planning.</p><p>“In the past, the Pentagon’s response to climate change has focused chiefly on preparing military installations to adapt to its effects, as in protecting coastal naval bases from rising sea levels,” the NYT <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/us/pentagon-says-global-warming-presents-immediate-security-threat.html?ref=us" target="_blank">article</a> said.</p><p>“But the new report calls on the military to incorporate climate change into broader strategic thinking about high-risk regions — for example, the ways in which drought and food shortages might set off political unrest in the Middle East and Africa.”</p><p>The article added that the Pentagon’s increased emphasis on the threats of climate change is aimed in part at building support for a United Nations agreement, to be signed next year in Paris, that would require the world’s largest producers of planet-warming carbon pollution to slash their emissions.</p><p>The Los Angeles Times<a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-hagel-climate-change-20141013-story.html" target="_blank"> said</a> Peruvian President Ollanta Humala noted in opening remarks of the defense summit that “if we don’t do anything to address the effects of climate change, there will be nothing left.”</p> Tue, 14 Oct 2014 09:15:00 -0700Chris Rose, DeSmogBlog1023116 at https://www.alternet.orgEnvironmentWorldclimate changepentagonMajor Disasters Linked to Extreme Weather, Climate and Water Hazards On the Risehttps://www.alternet.org/environment/major-disasters-linked-extreme-weather-climate-and-water-hazards-rise
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Meteorological study says that climate-change related disasters will increase. </div></div></div><!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter[3]--><p>Recently published data collected by the World Meteorological Organization shows there were close to five times as many weather- and climate-change-related disasters in the first decade of this century than in the 1970s.</p><p>As many as 1.94 million people lost their lives due to these catastrophic weather events between 1970 and 2012, which cost $2.4 trillion U.S. in economic losses, according to the <a href="http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/drr/transfer/2014.06.12-WMO1123_Atlas_120614.pdf" target="_blank">Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate and Water Extremes (1970–2012)</a>.</p><p>The 44-page atlas, a joint publication of the Geneva-based UN agency WMO and the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) of the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, examined major reported disasters linked to weather, climate and water extremes.</p><p>The atlas included 8,835 major disasters in the four decades between 1970 and 2010. The largest increase, however, was between 1971 and 1980 with 743 extreme events and 2001 and 2010 with 3,496 events.</p><p>Flooding and storms were the main cause of the disasters in the last decade but the data also shows heat waves are becoming more deadly and more common.</p><p>“Disasters caused by weather, climate, and water-related hazards are on the rise worldwide. Both industrialized and non-industrialized countries are bearing the burden of repeated floods, droughts, temperature extremes and storms,”<a href="http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_998_en.html" target="_blank">WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said</a> in an accompanying media release.</p><p>“Improved early warning systems and disaster management are helping to prevent loss of life. But the socio-economic impact of disasters is escalating because of their increasing frequency and severity and the growing vulnerability of human societies.”</p><p>Written to help decision-makers better understand the disasters and efficiently plan for future similar events, the atlas found that the 10 costliest catastrophes accounted for 19% or $444 billion of overall economic losses.</p><p>“Storms and floods accounted for 79% of the total number of disasters due to weather, water and climate extremes and caused 54% of the deaths and 84% of economic losses,” the atlas said. “Droughts caused 35% of deaths, mainly due to the severe African droughts of 1975, 1983 and 1984.”</p><p>Ranking disasters according to the numbers of deaths, the atlas found that a 1983 drought in Ethiopia and a 1970 tropical cyclone in Bangladesh each killed 300,000 people, making them the most lethal weather-related events in the past 40 years.</p><p>In terms of economic losses by disaster types, hurricane Katrina in 2005 was the most expensive, costing $147 billion. Hurricane Sandy, in 2012, was the second most expensive storm, costing $50 billion.</p><p>The media release also noted the UN’s Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2013 concluded that direct and indirect losses from natural hazards of all kinds have been underestimated by at least 50% because of data collection challenges.</p><p>“Another challenge for users of risk information is the changing characteristics (frequency, location, severity) of weather-, climate- and water-related hazards,” the release added. “Natural climate variability is now exacerbated by long-term, human-induced climate change, so that yesterday’s norms will not be the same as tomorrow’s.”</p> Tue, 19 Aug 2014 12:58:00 -0700Chris Rose, DeSmogBlog1016125 at https://www.alternet.orgEnvironmentEnvironmentWaterclimate changeFossil Fuels Causing Mercury Levels to Spike in Oceanshttps://www.alternet.org/environment/fossil-fuels-causing-mercury-levels-spike-oceans
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">A shocking study shows that environmental poison in marine waters have tripled since the Industrial Revolution. </div></div></div><!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter[3]--><p>An alarming new study has found that human activities mostly associated with burning fossil fuels has resulted in a massive increase in the levels of toxic mercury in the world’s oceans.</p><p>Published last week in the prestigious international journal Nature, the study, <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v512/n7512/full/nature13563.html" target="_blank">A global ocean inventory of anthropogenic mercury based on water column measurements</a>, revealed that levels of the environmental poison in marine waters less than 100 metres deep have more than tripled since the Industrial Revolution.</p><p>Using water samples collected during research trips in the Pacific, Atlantic, Southern and Arctic oceans from 2006 until 2011, scientists analyzed mineral mercury levels attributed to fossil fuels, mining and sewage in both shallow and deep seawater.</p><p>While they found that mercury levels in ocean waters less than 100 metres deep had increased by a factor of 3.4 since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, concentrations of mercury throughout the entire ocean had only jumped about 10 percent.</p><p>The scientists were affiliated with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Wright State University, Observatoire Midi-Pyréneés in France, and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research.</p><p>“With the increases we’ve seen in the recent past, the next 50 years could very well add the same amount we’ve seen in the past 150,” <a href="http://www.whoi.edu/news-release/mercury-in-global-ocean" target="_blank">said Woods Hole marine chemist Carl Lamborg</a>, who led the study.</p><p>“The trouble is, we don’t know what it all means for fish and marine mammals. It likely means some fish also contain at least three times more mercury than 150 years ago, but it could be more. The key is now we have some solid numbers on which to base continued work.”</p><p>Medical experts have long been warning people — especially pregnant women and small children — to limit or avoid eating some fish like albacore tuna and swordfish because toxic levels of mercury have been found to accumulate in certain species. Numerous studies have shown that <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/20/hm.fish.mercury/index.html" target="_blank">mercury can cause reproductive and neurological problems</a>.</p><p>According to an accompanying Nature article, the scientists said ocean circulation patterns have helped to blunt the effects of some of the rise in marine mercury.</p><p>“Circulation patterns that drive very cold, salty and dense water to sink into the deep ocean carry large amounts of mercury from shallower depths where life abounds,” the <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/humans-have-tripled-mercury-levels-in-upper-ocean-1.15680" target="_blank">article</a> said.</p><p>“That provides some protection to marine life, as mercury’s toxic effects magnify with every step up the food chain. For example, the mercury levels in a top predator such as tuna are 10 million times higher than those in the surrounding seawater.”</p><p>But Lamborg added that the deep water’s ability to sequester mercury may soon be exhausted.</p><p>“You’re starting to overwhelm the ability of deep water formation to hide some of that mercury from us, with the net result that more and more of our emissions will be found in progressively shallower water,” Lamborg was quoted as saying, an event that would increase the odds that mercury levels in key food species will rise, furthering humans’ exposure.</p> Tue, 12 Aug 2014 07:24:00 -0700Chris Rose, DeSmogBlog1015194 at https://www.alternet.orgEnvironmentEnvironmentNews & PoliticsWateroceansmercuryfish